Cheers montyman, i'll bear this in miond when i get it. Its a pity that this flaw exsists. I havent extended my one year warrenty but i guess i will. Even though they claim they will cover this regardless, probably best to be doubly sure. Any good 3/5 year cover deals around?

Sounds like i'll go for the sony case, whats the ref number and price?

The case part number is 'LCSVHB' and you'll be able to check the recommended retail price on sonystyle, depending on where you are. ie: www.sonystyle.com or www.sonystyle.co.uk etc. (or your local camera shop will be able to get one for you).

You can also buy online through the Sonystyle sites. I'm in New Zealand and we have a local Sonystyle store in my city (also www.sonystyle.co.nz). I paid $59 NZD for the bag ($1 NZD = $0.58 USD).

When you purchased your camera there should have been a card in the box which offered an extended warranty. This should be competitive with third party store warranties, and if you purchase one direct through Sony you wont have to mess around with claim numbers etc, while the store acts as a middleman.

There are lower cost bags available, but the Sony bag is the best fit because it was made exclusively for the V1, excellent quality, and it looks cool too!

If however you want to keep the charger, batteries, lenses, mini tripod etc all in the case then you'll want something bigger. If this is the case, check out Lowepro bags at www.lowepro.com and look for their D-Res series. The site seems down at the moment - just tried it.

Basically the Sony case holds the camera, spare battery and a spare memory stick. Yet it still maintains the smallest size possible in doing this, which is important to me because I wanted to buy a top quality camera that was small, and it defeats this purpose when it's in large bag.

I plan to take some long exposure night time shot of buildings with cars whizzing past leaving light trails etc - have you/ anyone tried this with a V1 b4.? Never even tried it with digital b4. :shock:

Whats Noise Reduction and can you/ do you need to switch it off for this kind of shot?

I just bought a V1 a couple weeks ago also and really like it so far. One question I had though is when I take pictures using the 5.0 and fine quality settings I see some pixelation when viewing it on my computer monitor in full size. Is this something that's caused by the resolution of my monitor (1024x768), my lame photography ability or were my expectations just too high? Here's a shot I took of the front of my house so you can compare to what your getting from your V1's.

I've had a look at your photo and the pixelation you're referring to is called noise. It plagues virtually every digital camera (some worse than others), and is worse with higher ISO settings.

When I first saw your photo I thought it had been taken at ISO400 or 800, but after checking the file properties, it is actually taken at ISO100. I have just taken a couple of test shots with my V1 set to both fine and standard compression (all other parameters the same), and the noise levels are exactly the same, so that cant be the problem.

I wouldnt get too concerned with the level of noise, as the V1 actually has the lowest noise levels when compared to equivalent cameras from other manufacturers (yes, even the Canon G5).

If you had taken the same photo on a brighter day there would be less noise. Noise is typically worse in darker areas of the photo.

I take most photos with the ISO sensitivity locked at 100. However, be sure to set this to auto if you use nightframing or nightshot (which requires high ISO sensitivities).

Okay well I feel better about it now. This is my first digital camera so I didn't know exactly what to expect and just wanted to make sure it wasn't a problem with the camera. Those links were interesting thanks for posting them. Looks like I need to learn a little more about this stuff. Thanks again.

I'm just wondering, what kind of lowepro bag did you buy for your v1. I kept on trying to check the camera matrix in the lowepro website just to make sure what kind of bag to get for my v1 but I can't seem to download/open it from the site. It's a good thing the store I bought from had a v1 and we tried fitting it in the bag. Just want to make sure I bought right sized bag for the v1.